Whining, Bitching? Is There A Difference?!

This blog is for whining, right? Well good thing, I need to whine and bitch and YES, I have wine :)  Truthfully, I think I need to do more bitching, than whining.  We whine about things that bug us or stuff we can't fix & we bitch about things that bug us and stuff we can't fix too...but bitching just seems more appropriate a word.  Go with it.... ok? Oh &  PS, my spell check isn't working, and again some wine is involved...you have been warned.

*** Nope, blogger wont let me fix those fucked up little "&" signs either! I had to copy and paste this from Twired as I accidentally posted it there first. Oops.

BITCH drank all my wine!

As some of you know, I work for a company called Restaurant Events Inc. Basically our company helps meeting planners & local DMC's  find restaurants/bars/similar venues for their clients looking to do large dinners, restaurant buyouts, dine-arounds, reservation programs, progressive dinners, block parties etc...all based on their specific requests.  We're a great resource because rather than the meeting planner or direct client having to call 10 different venues, get 10 different quotes etc...we have all of the pricing, menu info and more on hand. In turn, the restaurants pay us to represent them & bring them more business.

That said, I had a lady contact us a couple of weeks ago. I will call her "M." M is a meeting planner for Kaiser health group.  The hotel they were booking into couldn't accommodate their size group & combined budget for dinner, so they referred her to us.  She had a super crappy budget with 80-85 people for private space: reception & dinner.  A couple of days later I presented her with a whopping two options. I just couldn't find space that would take that budget. Sure many restaurants had a menu that would fit, but the food &  beverage minimums required to secure that space would have been too high...for her company.  Luckily she ended up going with one of my two suggestions.  We booked her group on the patio of a local seafood restaurant for July 27th, per her request.

Cut to this morning.  She emails me about finalizing the menus choices & I'm a bit surprised at how eager beaver she is. I'd sent her a contract &  left some things TBD, telling her we could finalize in the next few weeks.

No offense Mr. Beaver.

That's when I get this response: (real response from my work email!)

"I'm out until I see you in San Diego, can you give me a ring now? "

My out loud response.."Ummmm, what?!?" RED FLAG!

So of course I scramble to my file and look at her ORIGINAL email...yup, it says JULY 27th. All my emails following that say JULY 27th.  Did she mean JUNE 27th?!?!?

I called her & immediately yet calmly said "So, you're out of the office for a month?"  As I suspected she tells me the event is on Monday.  Um....NO IT'S NOT LADY!  I proceed to inform her ( and fwd her the original email) that says JULY 27th.  She seriously says in a Daria (skip to .31 sec) voice, "Oh, I meant June 27th, I already sent out all of the invites....shoot."  SHOOT?!?!

I couldn't believe how unaffected she seemed to be....Even worse, it's like she just thought finding space for her ginormous group with a shit budget would be easy on the fly. I mean lady, I can't just pull a venue out of my ass for Monday. There's a HUGE pharmaceutical conference in town.  I basically just told her I'd call the Harbor House on the extreme off chance they'd have the patio available, THIS Monday. One of the busiest Mondays of the year so far.  Silently I kep thinking the lady was shit out of luck and would end up at TGI Fridays.

Long story short, I FINALLY heard back from the GM at the Harbor House & they could accommodate them on Monday.  I called to give her the good news & though she genuinely (sort of ) thanked me, I still got the feeling that maaaybe she didn't think this was a big deal.  How the hell did she not notice JULY 27th plastered all over each email we sent back and forth, let alone the contract which she'd yet to sign.  Crazy enough, she later brought up the date on the contract saying she thought it was my minor mistake?! Um...WTF lady?! What planet are you on???

Ok I feel better.

xo J